NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE 
in all his grafting tests was that of a union of 
two plums, one brought over from France, 
there being no other plum like it in the new 
world, the other the Kelsey plum, well known 
in western America. The graft was attached 
to the parent tree, the Kelsey, in the usual 
way, but, when blooming time came, the graft, 
though growing heartily, put forth no blos- 
soms. It did, however, a still stranger thing 
than this, one of the strangest in all plant 
history,—it changed the entire life of the par- 
ent,—a thing hinted at by Darwin as being in 
the list of possibilities but never known before. 
The tree, by some strange influence born of 
the grafting, completely changed its own life, 
or, at least, so changed it that its own seeds 
in turn developed the French plum. It thus 
formed in the tree itself a cross between two 
trees that had never been crossed before, the 
life of the one entering into and transforming 
the life of the other. 
Mr. Burbank heartily recommends the work 
of grafting from seedlings to all amateurs, 
whether their grounds are small or large. He 
says that such immediate results need not be 
looked for as in the breeding of flowers, be- 
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